Spiritual Cafe Serves Encounters with the Living God

Shannon Coenen

As President and Co-Founder, Shannon leads the organization and oversees numerous overseas projects. She also administrates GOF's Shepherd School, a ministry training program. She is an accomplished administrator, preacher, teacher, and speaker with more than 25 years nonprofit and ministry experience.

Have you ever had a crisis leaving you utterly devastated or emotionally crushed? Who do you turn to?

No…imagine that crisis without Christ.

Meet Adam. (Name changed for confidentiality.) Years before, he abandoned his faith in Christ. Now, Adam was in crisis at the unexpected death of his wife. He was hopeless and alone.

Earlier, a GOF Missionary and local church members in Great Britain had been praying for opportunities to share the Gospel. As a post-Christian nation, overt evangelism proves difficult. The team needed a novel way to draw the lost and meet spiritual needs in a non-threatening way.

So they opened the “Spiritual Café” in a hotel conference room where the spiritually curious come to experience “spiritual things” twice a month. Though the advertising speaks nothing of Jesus, the outreach draws an average of 50 people each time — mostly unbelievers!

In his grief, Adam visited the Spiritual Cafe. The team prayed with him, connected him with a grief counselor and a local church. Most importantly, Adam gave his life to Jesus once again!

There are so many others out there like Adam and Tim — without hope, backslidden, never having heard about Jesus, needing someone to stand with them in their need.

Tim (name changed) also visited the Spiritual Café after he received a flyer. We know little about Tim’s life other than he is not a Christian (yet!) and suffered from significant hearing loss.

A key foundation of the Spiritual Café outreach is meeting people where they are and asking few questions. This allows the Lord to speak through the team and confirms for the visitor that spoken words were not through human knowledge, but from the living God.

The team prayed for Tim and his hearing was restored!

Then the unexpected happened. As he rose to leave, he said, “Hey! You didn’t tell me you were praying for my knee! It’s healed too!” The team hadn’t prayed for Tim’s knee, bu tthe Lord knew his need and responded. Please pray Tm comes into relationship with the Lord who physically healed him.

THANK YOU for your support of GOF Missionaries and outreaches around the world!

There are so many others out there like Adam and Tim — without hope, backslidden, never having heard of Jesus, needing someone to stand with them in their need.

Your suppor tmeans GOF Missionaries are present and ready to share the love of Jesus in practical ways, to advance the Gospel in word AND deed. We cannot do this work without you, so thank you!

If you would like to help GOF continue taking the Gospel to new places and be prepared to meet practical needs, you may do so below.

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